THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER (1963)

A man (in thick obvious make-up) rigs an elevator to so that the rider, John Devitt, will be killed, then he crosses Devitt's name off of a list, leaving only one name, Adrian Messenger. Next, we see retired MI5 agent Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott, pictured) at a fox hunt at the estate of the Marquis of Gleneyre where he is approached by his old friend, Adrian Messenger, and given a copy of the list with his name on it that we've already seen. Messenger asks Gethryn to track down these people while he takes a trip to Canada. Gethryn agrees, but at the airport, Messenger takes a kindly vicar's overflow luggage with him on the plane. We then see the vicar enter an airport restroom and remove his facial make-up and the next thing we know, the plane has exploded thanks to a bomb in the vicar's luggage. A surviving passenger named Le Borg hears Messenger's dying words, and he is visited in the hospital by both Gethryn and Messenger's cousin Lady Jocelyn (Dana Wynter). After some sleuthing and tracking down of men and information, Gethryn realizes that all the men on the list were POWs in Burma and the killer, George Brougham (Kirk Douglas), has been using elaborate disguises to kill of these men to hide the secret that he was an informer during the war which might stymie his claim to the Marquis's estate. But he needs to get rid of one more person to inherit an estate and live easy: the Marquis' young grandson.

I remember seeing this overly tricky and somewhat fussy mystery thriller at the age of 9 and realizing that it felt different from the average Hollywood movie. Back then, I couldn't put my finger on why, but now I see that: 1) it has the feel of what would today be an indie movie—and indeed, director John Huston frequently made his films outside the studio system, even if a studio did step in to distribute them; 2) it was made in Ireland; 3) chunks of dialogue are rather badly overdubbed. At the time of release, the big draw for the film was the presence of several big name actors (Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster) playing cameos in heavy disguise, though this ends up being more distracting than fun, and certainly not essential to the storyline, except for the disguises of Kirk Douglas, whose role is much bigger than a cameo. The mystery is not terribly involving, though Scott makes the movie worth watching. I suspect Huston's heart was more into filming in Ireland and going on fox hunts rather than in making a coherent movie. Also with Herbert Marshall and Gladys Cooper in their twilight years. Interesting more as a curio than anything else. [TCM]